When CWG & Cheese Made My Sunday!

When you have a crappy day, life does give you a good day too. I have had crappy 10 months and cannot wait to begin my awesome 10 either. For now, let me just give you an account of the one good day that I had after a super-sucky Saturday.

After some decent sleep after several days, I woke up around noon this Sunday to be ready in time for my lunch appointment with Ridhima and Swetha. The two women I literally lived with for the past two years. I was seeing them after six months. I am tired of saying that time flies, but yes, it does.

So, CP, the central place was inaccessible and kinda closed because of the CWG cycling event and we had to find another location to meet. I forgot that I had sworn to not visit the Rajouri malls on a Sunday and agreed to meet them there for lunch. I then waded through to the West Gate Mall to see them at TGIF. I don’t know why, but I had never visited that restaurant earlier and had an impression that it has good ambience. Well, that wasn’t true but the food certainly did not disappoint.

It was good to see the girls after so long. We talked, and could have gone on for the rest of the day, but I had more plans for the evening. But before leaving, I did shop for a rather smart sweater with them. 😀

Ridhima and I took the same train towards CP. She was going home, and I was headed towards the Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium. We boarded the women’s coach, a first for me. It felt a little odd, but was certainly more comfortable than the rest of the train. While I did not get space to sit, at least I got to stand in peace. Then I switched the train at CP, and then at Central Secretariat. At C. Sec, there seemed to be no directions near the platforms regarding how to make the switch. It took me a while and a few more clueless people to figure that I should move one level up if I want any information at all. I finally saw the new platform and got shoved into the train thanks to the maddening crowd. It seemed like the whole world was going to the same stadium to watch the same event. And I was not wrong. The stadium with a capacity of 60,000 was almost full. Most people used the Metro to get there. I do not want to criticise, but the well-managed venue missed the metal around my leg. The Metro guys had missed it too today. Yep, loopholes.

The packed stadium

I was there to watch some athletics with two of my cousins. While we were walking in to find a place to sit, the noise was unbelievable. Of course, had to be an Indian doing well. At discus throw this time. The sport might not be exciting, but with that kind of numbers cheering together, everything becomes exciting.

With Daksh, Bhrigu and our make-do phone camera

There were many events running simultaneously. India was doing well in men’s discus throw, and women’s long jump. We got a silver in both. But the loudest cheering happened for Tintu Luka who won an 800 m race. It was one of the heats, but her margin was supercool!

Men’s 400m hurdles

Women’s 200m final

Parasports

A very rare but heartening sight. The picture is blurred, but people stood for every nation’s anthem every single time.

We were there till around 8:30 pm. We kept hoping for a chance to hear our own anthem, and long jump did seem promising for a gold until almost the last jump, but we were not in luck. So we decided to move for dinner. This time at Flavors in Defence Colony. That’s another place which never disappoints with its food. Nice, authentic-ish, Italian stuff. And for the perfect end, we shared a perfect chocolate mousse.

Blurred long jump in action 🙂

These last two pictures are from Friday’s weightlifting event that I had managed to attend with Daksh again.